"Bairn, I have just been telling ye there is nothing else ye can do just
now. I have no ready money. Your father had nothing to leave ye but his
share of this place; and, so far, we've just got along year by year, and
that's all. I'll work it as well as I can, and, if ye like, ye're
welcome to live free and lay by your share year by year till ye have
something to take with ye and are old enough to go away. But if ye go
off now ye'll have to live as a servant, and ye couldn't thole that, and
I couldn't for ye. Ye have no one to protect ye now but me. I've no
friends to send ye to. What do ye know of the world? It's unkind--ay,
and it's wicked too."

"How's it so wicked? You're not wicked, nor father, nor me, nor the
men--how's people outside so much wickeder?"

Bates's mouth--it was a rather broad, powerful mouth--began to grow hard
at her continued contention, perhaps also at the thought of the evils of
which he dreamed. "It's a very _evil_ world," he said, just as he would
have said that two and two made four to a child who had dared to
question that fact. "Ye're too young to understand it now: ye must take
my word for it."

She made no sort of answer; she gave no sign of yielding; but, because
she had made no answer, he, self-willed and opinionated man that he was,
felt assured that she had no answer to give, and went on to talk as if
that one point were settled.

"Ye can be happy here if ye will only think so. If we seem hard on ye in
the house about the meals and that, I'll try to be better tempered. Ye
haven't read all the books we have yet, but I'll get more the first
chance if ye like. Come, Sissy, think how lonesome I'd be without ye!"